Check Yourself, Before You Wreck Yourself Makeup Mistakes

For the life of me I can’t recall the handle of this lovely lady in Florida who used to make youTube videos and go off on beauty and makeup tangents. She did one about how she checked herself in every single mirror of her house before heading out because each area had different lighting.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time you probably remember when I posted that video. It was truly brilliant and although at the time a little funny it actually gave some very sound advice.

I don’t have a ton of natural light in my home so, it proves difficult to see how a certain blush or eyeshadow or even my foundation would like in the sunlight. I know on more than one occasion my makeup looks great in my bathroom mirror but I head outside, look in my car mirror, and proceed to cringe as I have too much blush on or my foundation isn’t blended well enough.

I’ve made plenty of makeup mistakes in my time and most are publicly documented on this site for anyone to see. Embarrassing!

One of my biggest makeup mistakes, to this very day, is blush application. I’m very, very heavy handed and more often times than not I’m walking around with severe clown cheeks. I swear in my bedroom vanity mirror it looks fine but I head out and I look obscene. After all these years I still haven’t perfected blush application. One day I will master you!

I do find myself wandering from mirror to mirror to mirror in my house to check myself out before I go out the door as each room where there is a mirror there’s also different lighting.

Comments

I have to do some fill in on my brows and my left brow in particular. I thought they looked fine in my bathroom mirror, looking straight at the mirror. Got in the car and took a look in the rearview mirror and I was mortified to see that I had barely filled in the left one. No time to go back and fix, so the day was spent thinking everyone was focusing on my scraggly left brow. Now I do them in front of a window (after checking to make sure my neighbors aren’t outside) and looking at a handheld mirror from the side.

Me too! Uggghhh…that is so embarrassing! I always look like a hot mess when I look in my car’s mirror, even when I try to take a lighter hand when applying my makeup! My bathroom even has a window so I have a lot of natural light. Many a time I look at myself in a hand mirror after I have done my makeup but it does not seem to help me evidently!

Remember in the 80’s Clairol sold a lighted mirror that had changeable light settings like incandescent, fluorescent, candlelight, etc? They should make an updated version to include “rear view mirror” and “eco friendly light bulb”. I’m sorta making a funny, but I’m serious!

Because of the way my lights are set up, my main source of light comes from my left side and is bright enough to highlight my eyes. So when I do eye shadow, the light is stronger then regular. One day I did what I thought was a fantastic matte look with browns and grays that looked very sophisticated. When I got to work and looked at my compact, it looked exactly like someone had blackened both my eyes and I was trying to cover it up with bad makeup. We’re talking Halloween type of makeup one would use for a zombie look. I tried to blend it out, but it just made everything worse. But I keep trying to make mattes work, and have yet to master the look of sophistication over bad goth imitator. Thankfully, I have my own office, so on the really bad days, I just pretend I’m to busy to see anyone that day.

Just prior to last week’s blog and comments about wearing more natural make-up, I had applied a lovely pink eyeshadow in my crease. I put my makeup on in front of a mirror in the bedroom, which isn’t great but it’s better than the godawful lighting in the bathroom. In any case, I check in both rooms and in front of a window, and it looked fine and blended and yadda yadda yadda. Somehow, by the time I got in my car and looked in the mirror, the lovely pink shadow morphed into a bright, neon pink 80s flashback with which I could do nothing until I removed it at the end of the day. Fun (not).

Haha I love blush too much as well! No shame! My main mishap is wearing a foundation shade that’s slightly too light after tanning in the sun. In my bedroom it looks alright, but the car mirror tells no lies lol. And smeared liquid lipstick that’s too dry to manipulate? Yep. I’ve been wearing gloss lately for that very reason!

I used to have the same problem when it came to blushes. Watched some videos taken of me; I was appalled at my clown cheeks! What has helped a lot for me is using a fan brush for blushes instead of a blush brush, and going easy on the apples of the cheeks. Not saying there’s no room for improvement, because yeah…

I do my makeup in my car before I head in to work, because I figure if it looks ok there, it will look ok out in the real world. I always make sure to park near the edge of the garage, where the natural light comes in, and away from all my coworkers arriving for the day! 🙂

I don’t know if this is from using too much BB cream or not blending enough or mixing in too much highlighting primer/lotion (to something this is already dewy — I am all about dewy), but — even though I look fine in my mirrors — I sometimes get that weird, plastic-y mannequin look when I catch sight of myself outside my house.

I used to apply my makeup in my bathroom mirror until my eyesight started going downhill. That’s when I discovered that there is no more valuable makeup tool than a good lighted mirror with magnification and shadow free lighting. I have a couple but my current fave is the new battery operated one from Simple Human. It’s brilliant. I even stuck a smaller magnification mirror on the top part of the makeup mirror. Because eyesight! It’s become crucial to applying my eye makeup so I don’t have eyeliner out of place, fallout all over my cheeks, under eye cracks from concealer, and so on. It’s terrifying to see myself in such close up, no punches pulled lighting. But I never leave the house with mistakes now. Highly recommend.

I suck at filling in my eyebrows and they’re pretty full anyway so I don’t even do eyebrow fill in now. Our bathroom has no natural light and I was always wearing really bad color choices that looked good in bathroom lighting but were super bad in natural light like foundation shades. So I have found over the last few months I apply everything in the bathroom and then go into a room with a lot of windows and double check things in a small mirror, I should invest in a makeup mirror I can place on our table and do it in my bright kitchen.

Most comments here involve lighting mishaps. But me…Well, I wore heavy black eyeliner on my bottom lids, and nothing on my top lids for over TEN YEARS. Being a goth was no excuse! I somehow thought top eyeliner would be “too much.” *headdesk*

I use full spectrum lights in my makeup room, and my blush looks fine. I go outside, and it looks fine. I step into the other rooms of my house, and I either have clown cheeks or you can’t tell I have blush on, depending on the room. I told my hubby we need to coordinate or light bulbs, but he just laughs at me.

On the makeup side of things, I used to wear foundation that was too dark and/or oxidized. Not too many choices in the 80s, so I lived with it. Thank God there are face primers, mineral powder foundations, and all-over better formulas nowdays. Pickings are still slim, but at least there are a few foundations that match me now.

I do my makeup early, around 6 am, while drinking my coffee, and then walk my dogs. If I remember, I snap a quick close up selfie outside in natural light on our walk to make sure everything is properly blended and natural looking. If anything looks funky in the photo, I fix it after our walk, before I tackle my hair. The final check is in the car on arrival at work. I have a mini collection of products in my desk drawer to blot, blend and add anything that goes south during the day.

I once used Mally’s Under Eye Brightener or “sunshine in a jar” under my eyes then went to the store. I thought the checker had given me an odd look over, then when I got home I had two thick yellow lines, one under each eye where it creased! I was horrified! I still use it, just not too close to my eye and always check in my rearview mirror before I get out of my car now.

Usually it’s lipstick for me, that looks fine in my bedroom mirror, but, one look in the car mirror and WAY too bright! That’s why i always keep a neutral lip color with me to tone down whatever i overdo. I always have a heavy hand!

I just realized that the window in my bathroom is better for applying makeup than the window in my bedroom. My problem is applying too much foundation so it looks (and is) caked on. Not a pretty sight and I don’t realize it until I’m already out the door.

Good tip on the natural light. I also am heavy handed on applying blush and it’s even worse as I have pale skin. I’ve stopped using blush for this reason. Thankfully, I haven’t purchased many. Maybe someday I’ll try them again.

for me it’s concealer!! when i spot conceal…and it looks like it matches but it really doesn’t and i have these dark spots all around my face, and of course they don’t budge when i try to smear them out because i always get the super duty concealers! sometimes i even wait to do it in the car just so I don’t look silly!

Blending out my foundation fully! It always looks great inside but when I step out, there’s /always/ a patch I miss. So I open the curtains and apply my makeup in the living room, and when I get out to the car, I keep a small makeup bag with my that has concealer, foundation, setting powder, a flat foundation brush, and a buffing brush. =P Over the top? Yes. Flawless? ALWAYS.

Mine would be eyeshadow because I tend to be heavy-handed when it comes to eyeshadow application. But I lack practice so yeah, that’s to blame. I remember that I was once heavy-handed on blush as well. I recognized it while looking at the mirror and the succeeding times of application, I already knew how to do it subtly.